


the art of scraping by

by fairbanks



Series: relearning [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Hair Washing, Hair-pulling, brief descriptions of violence, more a platonic relationship at this point, talk of former bad bdsm practices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 22:09:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21168668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairbanks/pseuds/fairbanks
Summary: daisy offers some aftercare a few months late.





	the art of scraping by

**Author's Note:**

> probably need to read the other fic to get it but if not this takes place after jon and daisy had a weird, very unhealthy bdsm kink thing going on during her full hunt days.

There are no windows in the Archives. It is a place underground, closer to the tunnels than the sun, so there are no windows, no light breezes or fresh air. If Daisy never noticed it before she does now, with each stilted intake of breath, each time she sucks in dust that has such a keen aftertaste of dirt.

Jon’s office smells more of paper and stale coffee. The tunnels pretend to smell of damp and dark but really smell like nothing at all. Basira let Daisy sleep in her bed one of those first nights and it didn’t smell like Basira, like that cheap, wonderful shampoo she’d use that was scented like what someone thought peaches smelled like but couldn’t quite recall. In truth Daisy tries not to drink any smells in deep, the invisible trails she once followed like sailors follow stars. She tries to smell nothing and she smells dirt, and damp, and dark.

(_Where were you?_ A baffled medic asked her when Basira insisted her emaciated form get care. Jon looked uneasy, dirty and tired. Basira didn’t bat an eye, didn’t blink. Daisy didn’t answer but thought _underground_ and smiled in a way that had Basira’s hand squeezing her shoulder- warning in the guise of comfort.)

“If I stay here any longer I’m going to scream,” Daisy tells no one as she sits on a stack of books and files and information she once had the urge to tear with her teeth. 

Jon hears her anyway. The door to his office is always open now. “You’ve taken the words out of my mouth,” he tells her, keys in hand. “Do you want to-”

“Yes,” Daisy answers, and follows Jon up to daylight once again, if only for a few moments of cigarette smoke.

\--

It takes a week for the cave in deep in her chest, the one that has her take the unspoken offer to go stay at Jon’s place. It happens as she lies in Basira’s bed and Basira isn’t there, only the dark walls of the tunnels, the Institute above and dirt, just dirt and bedrock down below. 

Basira asked if she’d be alright and Daisy answered she would, not because it was true but because the lines around Basira’s eyes told her the answer likely wouldn’t change anything. Daisy may may feel herself a weak, shaking thing freshly emerged from the earth but she has a core of steel and sharp edges. (And even so, she doesn’t think that steel would survive begging Basira to stay and being denied.)

She still has a key to Jon’s place in her pocket, brought down to the depths of the ground then back again. It should be bent beyond recognition but it’s whole and it fits perfectly when she turns the key and lets herself in.

Jon’s sitting on the couch, eyes wide but not as surprised as she expects. There’s folder upon folder before him, all statements of course, little piles of terrible memories set to ink. His lips thin and he says, “You realize how dangerous travelling alone is.”

“Yeah,” Daisy answers, closes and locks the door behind her. “Doesn’t stop you.”

She’s seen so many faces on Jon, tells and cues she’s promptly ignored to dig deeper into his fear. Maybe that’s why it’s strange to watch him blink slowly, as if registering her words but not quite comprehending until a beat after. She watches his mouth part and close again, crushing whatever thought came to mind before it could escape his lips. For the first time she’s curious what he would have said.

“I was careful,” he settles for, and Daisy snorts in way that has Jon glower, painfully familiar to the fussy little thing she used to pound into a mattress. She plops down on the couch next to him, knees brushing in blissful reminder that the whole scene is real.

“So was I.”

Jon goes to make them tea like hospitality is an atrophied muscle painful to stretch. Daisy sits quietly, looking around the apartment she’s been in so many times before but never really saw. Boxes still packed from a move, only the most basic essentials taken out as needed, a sofa and chairs so settled in they likely came from the place- all the signs of a lonely, rushed existence. 

She wonders if she’s the only person Jon ever had over. She wonders what happened to her own little flat, if the people living there might one day find traces of the blood she spilled when her gnashing need for violence overcame her sense. She wonders if the Eye is taking root in her now or that curiosity is her own.

Jon overbrews his tea she finds, taking her cup and the too dark drink sloshing within. She always took her tea with cream and sugar but Jon only has honey, of all things, which she mixes around her mug before taking a sip. It’s alright, better than she thought.

“Thanks,” she says with enough sincerity Jon ducks his head in a little nod. It reminds her of how he’d respond to the slightest praise when she tied him up, when she collared him and _hurt_ him and looking up at her with a shiver the rare times she told him he took pain well. 

Even now the thought of him on his knees is an appealing one, letting her control his body, his breath and focus, bearing his neck. She misses feeling like she has any control at all, that she isn’t a broken, delicate thing in need of tender care, of _protection_. She misses the blood on her teeth and how it felt to run her tongue over smooth enamel, the dangerous points. 

Jon watches her from the corner of his eye, awkward and fighting his questions back over his tongue and down his throat. It breaks Daisy’s concentration, makes her exhale in amusement. 

“I needed to get out,” she tells him, an answer offered that has him finally looking at her directly. “Not just the Archives, not just open air. Out.”

“You told Basira?”

“Texted her when I got here.” Beg forgiveness rather than permission. Jon’s knowing look would have made her snarl a few months ago. Now it’s nice to be known rather than lost and forgotten under the earth. “She… she needed me to be something I’m not. Don’t blame her for that and she’s never said it, but it’s hard sometimes.”

“She wanted you back,” Jon offers in a fumbling attempt at comfort, making Daisy snort.

“Yeah, and that helps. I don’t-” she starts, swallows and waits to make sure she can stop, that she isn’t spilling herself open for the Archivist and his recorder. When she can she eases. Maybe it’s fine to open just for Jon. “I don’t know how to be vulnerable, taken care of like a patient. Never asked for help in my life and now…”

Jon frowns but nods, that understanding again. His voice is dry when he says, “If it helps you’ve done a more graceful job of asking and receiving help than I ever had.”

Daisy chuckles, tired but sincere. “Kind of does, actually.”

The silence that follows is faintly familiar, the comfortable lulls in conversation they’d have under the earth, hands clasped and shaking. There’s no fear- or there’s not the same, immediate fear. Jon’s living area has big windows that lead to a fire escape, an escape. She can barely see the sky beyond the buildings and it helps.

“Look,” she starts and Jon glances over again, his gaze a physical thing now. “I’m sorry, for how I was before. Not just the attack, the- our arrangement. How I treated you.”

“I thought the treatment was rather the point,” Jon answers dryly, nervous in a way she can smell. She tries to breath through her mouth, human human _human._

“You know that’s not what I mean. I wasn’t safe, I didn’t take care of you afterwards, I didn’t ask for a safeword. I didn’t stop when it was clear you would have said it, should have.”

“Daisy I-” Jon starts, stops and frowns down at his half filled mug. No honey, just overly bitter tea rapidly cooling. “It isn’t as though I didn’t know what I was getting into. It’s alright.”

“It’s not alright,” Daisy answers firmly, an echo of her old voice, commanding Jon onto his knees. It makes Jon look at her again, eyes a touch wide. “It’s not, you know it isn’t. Don’t excuse it or put it on yourself to spare me. I’m not fragile, I know what I did and I know it was wrong. I’m not running from that.”

Jon stares at her a moment, unnerving and unblinking before he swallows. “You’re a rather remarkable person,” he tells her, and she swears she hears a bitter edge somewhere in there, directed back at himself like a knife. 

“I wasn’t for a long time.” Daisy shrugs, puts her cup down and watches Jon do the same.

“It’s not that I’m trying to spare you, I just- lord,” he looks at the ceiling then back at her like tearing off the bandage. “I was using you to hurt myself, Daisy. I did- it was enjoyable too, a way to just… lance out the stress. But it wasn’t always just that. So yes, you carry some of the blame but I’m certainly not blameless.”

“Did you ever wonder what would happen if you asked me to stop the arrangement?” Daisy asks, a creeping sickness curling in her stomach.

The way Jon frowns and looks away is answer enough. 

Daisy exhales and stands, walking away. Jon lets her, watches her go down the hall and into the bathroom, only joining her when he hears her turn on the bath. “Do you want me to g-”

“Quiet,” Daisy orders and he goes quiet dutifully, ingrained. She hopes he enjoys the direction rather than fearing what she’ll do if he kept talking. “I’m drawing you a bath, then I’m going to wash and trim your hair. It’s a mess and you said it needs trimming to stay out of your eyes, right?”

Jon stares blankly at her, a protest clearly on his lips before she interrupts it again. “I owe you a lot of aftercare, you look like you could use and honestly? I’m tired of being coddled and handled. Just… let me do this for you, if you want to.” She pauses, then offers with as much sincerity as she can muster. “Please.”

She waits, looking down at his socked feet as if to offer him privacy. He wavers on his feet for a few moments before nodding jerkily, something she only catches because of how it runs down his whole body. She nods back and turns to the tub, chest twisting with the unused muscles of care. 

Jon strips and gets into the bath as Daisy goes to find his scissors in one of the boxes. She takes a moment to wonder how it would have felt to do this for him before, when they were still so violent and feral, the whiplash of destruction and nurturing. With a shake of the head the thought clears and she returns to find Jon sitting awkwardly in the tub.

“Nothing I haven’t seen before, Jon,” she reminds him, which makes him scoff but ease with the little jab of humor. He’s different in a way she can’t put her finger on, not thinner exactly but less solid, like his body didn’t fully rise from the grave or from the earth with her.

She shudders around the thought, drawing Jon’s concerned gaze but she waves a hand and sits at the rim of the tub. There’s new scars down his chest, from the Unknowing, she thinks. Daisy has a few new ones of her own from when she tore out that monster’s throat with her teeth. He tasted like oil instead of blood and clawed at her throat, down her clavicle, taking chunks of flesh with him. Those wounds ended up filling with dirt, leaving thick waxy scars in memory.

A bowl from the kitchen works to pour bathwater over his hair, not actually as long as she remembers. Probably shaved in the hospital to get at wounds and left to grow out again in the months away. Her thoughts turn to whether his body was dead enough not to grow hair those three months but she ignores it, running her fingers through Jon’s hair. 

That gets most of the loose tangles out, leaving her to scratch lightly at his scalp. Jon’s remaining awkward tension begins to crack, his head leaning back into her fingers as if asking for more, a soft sound trapped in his throat.

“You always were noisy,” Daisy muses, finds herself grappling with the unfamiliar feeling of fondness. Jon swallows, a faint flush to his cheeks at the comment.

“I don’t recall you complaining.” So prim still, and Daisy exhales in amusement.

“I’m not complaining now.”

She tugs at his hair, not exactly gentle but at least without the intention of hurting him. As suspected the air punches out of him in a little groan, his head tilted back now to look up at her small smirk. 

“Don’t be so pleased with yourself,” he murmurs. Daisy lets go, hand running through the damp locks.

“You really don’t change.” 

Jon’s a little more open when she shampoos his hair, eyes closed to prevent the suds slipping down his face from getting into his eyes. Daisy imagines doing this for Basira, the lovely curve of her back as it eased, finally relaxing enough for one moment of peace. Her throat tightens and she pushes the image away for the moment, focusing on massaging Jon’s scalp and the little noises he makes getting longer, less hidden. The deep, shuddering sigh like his tension is bleeding out with his breath.

Once his hair is rinsed thoroughly she gets up to get a towel, letting him enjoy the warm water a few moments more before helping him out. Towel around his waist and seated on the toilet with his head craned forward makes him look younger somehow, all bird bones and angles and dull skin not quite flushed with the same life. Daisy cuts her own hair, always has, so it’s not difficult to trim Jon’s of split ends and out of his eyes. The pieces fall into little clumps on his towel, on the floor, black and grey.

It’s strange to have Jon quiet for so long, though the relaxed slope of his shoulders tells her it isn’t out of awkwardness any longer. “Looks good,” she tells him, watches the way he leans towards the faint praise like a flower to the sun. She runs her fingers through it again, testing the new length. When he looks up at her his hair no longer nearly fall in his eyes, leaving them large and unobstructed, likely dangerous.

“Thank you,” he says softly. “For all of this.”

“No it- it was good,” Daisy answers, and it was. She feels… she isn’t sure, maybe not better but more solid, more like herself in the ways she doesn’t hate. A little bolder too, enough to say, “Come on, bed.”

“You can stay,” Jon tells her when they reach the bedroom, after he pulled on some pajama pants and an old, ratty shirt. “Not to- not for anything untowards, just- to rest. I keep the window cracked, you can hear the wind.”

Daisy looks to the window, not as big as in the living area but still with the sky peeking out around the edges of buildings. She thinks of lying with Jon in the dirt, in the dark, the only warmth the comfort of his hand in hers.

“Yeah,” she says faintly.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [open hand or closed fist would be fine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21923635) by [Marianne_Dashwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marianne_Dashwood/pseuds/Marianne_Dashwood)


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